Buying and shipping
Overnight, Monday to Wednesday, and never into bad weather at either end.
Every listing here is one individual animal with its own name, its own generation and its own record of when it last moulted. You are choosing a specific spider rather than a species and a quantity, which is why a listing disappears the moment somebody buys it rather than decrementing a count.
Animals go out overnight, Monday to Wednesday, so that no parcel spends a weekend in a sorting facility. Each one travels in a ventilated container inside an insulated box, with a heat or cool pack matched to the forecast, and a card recording the pairing it came from.
We ship only when the weather at both ends allows. If the days a parcel would be travelling are too cold or too hot, we hold it and tell you. This is the least popular sentence on the site and the one most responsible for animals arriving alive: no amount of packing beats waiting for a better week.
When the box arrives, open it somewhere enclosed and at room temperature, and let the container sit for half an hour before you open that — a spider that has come in from the cold is sluggish, and a sluggish spider that is suddenly warm and startled is a spider on your floor. Expect it to be quiet for a day or two afterwards, and do not offer food until it is moving normally.
Every spider is guaranteed to arrive alive. If yours does not, photograph it in its travel container and tell us the same day it is delivered — the full terms, including what we need from you, are on the live arrival page.
Questions people ask
How are spiders shipped?
In a vented deli cup packed with tissue to prevent movement, inside an insulated box, overnight only. Shipping pauses when temperatures at either end fall outside roughly 4-32C — a spider that arrives cold usually does not recover, and no amount of packing beats simply waiting for a better week.